Business Work Life Balance

Work & Life Balance

Starting up your own business is often seen as a step to the work / life balance question. However, like most things, it’s not always as easy as you might think and getting the balance right is a fine art. Starting your own business means having your eyes wide open in every situation. For example, yes your working day doesn’t necessarily start by you being at your desk for 09:00 prompt and clock watching until 5pm….it might be longer !

Having flexible working hours is great, especially if you have children as you need to do the school run or be able to pick up a sick child at a moments notice.

While you do have a more flexible working pattern, you will need to make it up at other times such as evening or even starting very early in the morning.

The best advice to achieving a good work / life balance in business should include some of these tips below:

• Its sounds a little corny, but believe and have confidence you can do it !

• You cannot do everything - Get other people to help you, there are experts that can do something in hours which would take you days !

• Create a trusted team around you - Accountant, Website designers, delivery companies, PR, Marketing people etc

• Get a mentor - Someone you can bounce ideas off, or for them to 'tell you how it really is' can be very valuable indeed

- Learn from your mistakes - Don't be afraid of making them, learn, fine tune and move on. If a particular campaign or other piece of marketing didn't work, learn from it and try another tack
Top 10 things I would recommend to achieve a good work / balance ion business

• Get buy in from your family

• Listen to other people

• Create a business plan / roadmap - it helps focus your mind and gives you a framework to work towards

• Set yourself some realistic objectives that you can aim towards

• As Winston Churchill once said - 'Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never - in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense '

• Respond to all enquiries - You never know where it may lead

• Technology - Investigate what is available and use it to your advantage

• Social Media - Don't underestimate how powerful a Marketing tool this can be

• Make sure you have backup childcare or work out in advance how you are going to run your business around the children

• Make every minute count